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He finally became stone drunk; and in that condition these wags carried him to a dark rocky cave near the village, then, dressing themselves in raw-head-and-bloody-bones' style, awaited his return to consciousness.
And so a gentleman is not to make an excursion to a country town in a quiet way perhaps to recruit his health, perhaps to relax his mind, perhaps to gratify a whim but he must be pounced upon by some outrageous dispenser of magisterial justice, who thinks, that, because he wishes to live quietly and unknown, he must be some cutthroat, or raw-head-and-bloody-bones coming to eat half the country?"
It was hardly possible to realize that this pleasant person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the raw-head-and-bloody-bones the nursing mothers of the mountains terrified their children with. And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable about Slade except that his face was rather broad across the cheek bones, and that the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin and straight.
It is true, I have frequently seen him ready enough to eat a fellow a perfect raw-head-and-bloody-bones for which reason, I suppose, the principle, or instinct, or whatever you call it, is still latent in his constitution.
I tell you what, Dick, I'm not the man to skear at a raw-head-and-bloody-bones; but I do think the coming of this here cursed Jibbenainosay among us, jist as we was nabbing the girl and sodger, was as much as to say there was no good could come of it; and so the Injuns thought too you saw how hard it was to bring 'em up to the scratch, when they found he had been knifing a feller right among 'em!
He begs leave, then, to take this opportunity of asserting his perfect innocence of all the crimes laid to his charge, and to assure his reader that he never PANDERED TO HIS BAD TASTE, nor went one inch out of his way to introduce witch, fairy, devil, ghost, or any other of the grim fraternity of the redoubted Raw-head-and-bloody-bones.
They went; spent all their money; had a watch stolen from them in the steamboat; were dreadfully sea-sick off Point Judith; came home tired, and dusty; found the babe sick, because Sally had stood at the door with it, one chilly, damp morning, while she was feeding the chickens; and the eldest girl screaming and screeching at the thoughts of going to bed, because Sally, in order to bring her under her authority, had told her a frightful 'raw-head-and-bloody-bones' story; the horse had broken into the garden, and made wretched work with the vegetables; and fifty pounds of butter had become fit for the grease-pot, because the hoops of the firkin had sprung, and Sally had so much to do, that she never thought of going to see whether the butter was covered with brine.
But all the rest of the family of visions is quite lost to him: the common, mangled version of yesterday's affairs, the raw-head-and-bloody-bones nightmare, rumoured to be the child of toasted cheese these and their like are gone; and, for the most part, whether awake or asleep, he is simply occupied he or his little people in consciously making stories for the market.
It is precisely because we hold both in respect that we are sincerely anxious to point out their misapplication; and we have extended our observations to a greater length than we contemplated, partly because we fear that his strong though unregulated imagination, and unlimited command of glowing language, may inflict upon us a herd of imitators who, "possessing the contortions of the Sybil without her inspiration," will deluge us with dull, turgid, and disgusting enormities; and partly because we are not without hopes that our animadversions, offered in a spirit of sincerity, may induce the Author himself to abandon this new Apotheosis of the old Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, and assume a station in literature more consonant to his high endowments, and to that sacred profession to which, we understand, he does honour by the virtues of his private life.
In fact I am as jealous as the very Deuce whoever that personage may be quite an Othello in my way a perfect raw-head-and-bloody-bones with a sharp appetite and teeth like a Walrus, ready to bolt my rivals in dozens.
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